Posts Tagged rainbow bridge

Our 10th Anniversary (!) was the 23rd. We had a pretty mellow day, as we are still having a bit of a rough time over the recent loss of Pippi. We went out to eat (Golden Corral, John’s favorite new place. It only took me 14 years to get him to try it. lol) and watched a movie (The Rite).

I got John the by now, probably expected, Nancy Pinke pet portrait! I had planned a bit of a different schedule for the paintings, but Cajun’s passing moved him to next in line. Nancy is so wonderful to work with. I quickly sent her pictures the day Cajun died and said something like I don’t need this for a few months, but won’t be able to look at pictures, so I’m sending them to you now.

I think this is perhaps the best one she has done for us. John says the Zach one is still the best. They are all very good, but the Zach one really captured the Zach-a-roo. I think this one is very close, if not on the same level as the Zach one.

We had to let Pippi go on June 18th. This was completely unexpected and a total shock to us. Pip has been fairly healthy given her somewhat rough start. She was in a “rescue” in Texas that was letting her have puppies and we were unable to get them to release her to our organization for quite some time. Eventually, we sent someone down to do an adoption to get her out and by then she had heartworms. She was flown up to our area, went through the heartworm treatment, which in itself is a very risky treatment and was eventually adopted out through the organization (she was not fostered by us originally).

Her adoption fell through a few months later and she was returned to the organization, so we were asked to foster her temporarily. When time came to move her, I told the rescue chair (who was my friend) that she was going to have to be the one that pried Pippi from John’s cold dead hands because I was not going to get in the middle of that 😉 She decided that Pippi had already found her forever home. It turned out to be a good decision because Pip started having seizures soon after that, though they never got bad enough to need medication.

So Pip had been very healthy for the 8 years we have had her and we have only had her in for 1 non-routine vet visit (a slab fracture of a tooth which abcessed, which likely happened before we got her because I don’t allow the kinds of chew items that would normally cause a slab fracture. It can also be from chewing rocks, but she never did that here either). Saturday, she was a bit “off,” nothing really big, but John was off and wanted to take her to the vet. Our regular vet was off, so was our back up vet and our back up, back up vet. The girls at reception were nice enough to give us an “urgent care” appt. which is $40 cheaper than the emergency walk in fee, but we did not get the vet we were supposed to, which was a bit annoying. We got the ONE vet at our practice that I am not fond of.

I figured that Pip had hurt her back because her tail was down and she wasn’t too interested in moving around, but she was still eating/drinking and generally acting fairly like herself. She was trying to follow John around, but you could tell she wanted him to just stay put so she didn’t have to move a whole lot. Everything looked like “back” to me. I figured it would be a metacam script and 2 weeks of crate rest (which we have been through with various dogs before).

What is was, was multi-system organ failure 🙁 The prognosis was not very hopeful and at that point Pip was not suffering so we decided it was better to let her go before it got bad. We just lost Cajun in February to heart issues (one of the systems that was failing) and watching him slowly die was horrible for us and I’m sure it was no picnic for him, either.

We got her a memorial stone from Adirondack Stone Works, like we have with everyone else. They really do such nice work and they ship the stones out very quickly.

We got her remains back in a lovely wooden box with her name on the side.

Our vet did the paw print thing again. Pip’s is a bit different than Cajun’s was. They did both her front feet and she got different charms on her’s. It’s nice that they seem to put some thought into them when they make them. Pip’s was also in a little pink net bag for storage.

RIP PIPPI

You will be missed!

We got Cajun’s memorial stone from the same place we have gotten Ruthie’s, Zach’s and Otter’s. Adirondack Stone Works

Our vet clinic also did something different for us this time that we have not had done before, but I really appreciated it. When you board your dog/cat you have the option to sign them up for “arts and crafts.” The thought of this was so funny to me, so even though we have never boarded any of our guys I asked what that was and was told you could get a paw print made and stuff like that. So when John went to pick up Cajun’s ashes, they always had done a paw print of him for us.

You can’t tell in the picture, but the words on the dog house are “good dog.” This turned out to be kind of funny and have special meaning for us. We got Cajun and another foster on the same day. The other foster was…difficult and Cajun was a very easy going dog, so I took to calling him the good dog (as opposed to the nono bad dog) and it stuck so pretty soon he became Cajun Good Dog.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Cajun. It looks like it’s sideways, but it’s actually the right way. He was sitting directly below my chair and I called his name and when he looked up I snapped the shot and got this one.

It has taken me a while to be able to write this post. On February 11, 2011, Cajun crossed over the Rainbow Bridge. As some people know, he had a bad incident several weeks ago and we almost lost him. At that time, we initially thought that he was finally in heart failure, but he rallied over night in the ICU and we took him to a cardiologist for a consult and an echocardiogram and they discovered that he actually had a tear in the heart muscle.

It was not really related to his enlarged heart, it was just a flukey thing that can happen. The tear was already starting to heal and the vets felt that his prognosis was good given his recovery from it at that point. He was given some new meds and would be treated as a CHF (Congestive Heart Failure) dog from that point on, something we had been trying hard to keep him out of AND were succeeding at thus far!

He was sent home with instructions for no activity for 2 weeks. At 12 years old and with an enlarged heart, Cajun was not an overly active dog to begin with, so this wasn’t a big deal for him. The first couple days he was a bit sluggish, but after that he was back to his old self and you would never have known he almost died a few days before.

He went almost a week without his trademark coughing something we (and I’m sure he) were very grateful for. He started coughing again 1 week, to the day, of the incident and it was getting progressively worse, though not any worse than it usually was. However, I made a vet appointment for him just to make sure he was not having any fluid build up.

On the 10th, we went to his vet appt and he had a great check up. He was really happy and had a great day. He did is signature trick, sneezing on command, for Dr. Julie, our vet, which she was absolutely thrilled with. She said she had never seen that before in all her years as a vet. She was really happy with how he looked and how his heart and lungs sounded. We got his meds refilled and left, happy with his progress and prognosis.

We went to Petco to pick up a few things and he got a new toy and got to walk around a bit in the parking lot, which he had great fun doing. Then we drove through Wendy’s and he got his very own hamburger, which the dogs always enjoy as a special treat when we go out. He was fine and happy the rest of the day at home.

When we got up the next day, he was clearly distressed about something. I counted his respiration and it was no where near the danger zone and his gums were nice and pink. I put a call in to my vet on her cell phone which I *never* do, but I was a bit panicky. He seemed a bit nauseated so we gave him some pepto and he did settle down after that. I told John to go ahead and go to work since everything seemed ok at that point. He woke up in the afternoon and seemed better. He was interested in having treats and I was able to give him his meds in some squeeze cheese, but almost as soon has he took them he became clearly nauseated and distressed again.

He also started coughing, but that was normal after having anything to eat. He coughed off and on for about 90 minutes and finally settled down again on my bed. I checked on him and he was laying near my pillows on his side. His respiration was again not near the danger zone, so I left him there to rest, knowing he must be exhausted after the coughing episode.

When I went to check on him the next time, I found him passed away right where I had left him 🙁 I was (and still am) completely devastated 🙁 He had such a good day the day before, which is a blessing, but it’s SO hard to lose him the very next day.

Our vet thinks it was probably the “cord” in one of the values in the heart that snapped (which they suspected with the first incident that turned out to be the tear) or that he threw a clot. We will never know for sure, but she says that fact that his respiration never went into the danger zone and his gums stayed pink is a good sign that he did not suffer (ie: suffocate/die painfully) and he probably just kind of faded away.

Yesterday, when we had the kittens at the vet we were able to pick up Otter’s ashes. I have never had a pet cremated before so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect when they returned the ashes.

I have to say that I am impressed with the way this very sensitive matter is handled, at least by our vet hospital.

The ashes were returned in a very nice decorative wooden box and also there is a nice little certificate that certifies that they are returning your pets ashes and it has her name and date and our names on it. They also include a little engraved nameplate that you can stick on the box.

We also received her memorial stone on Monday and John put it out in the yard yesterday with Zach and Ruthie.